Brookings has created a tool, Visa Outlook Explorer, to project the labor needs of immigrants through 2030, including at the state level and broken down by occupation.
According to the organization’s publication, immigrants make up nearly 20% of the U.S. workforce, a proportion that has been increasing over the past 15 years and has accelerated since 2020 as immigrants returned to work more quickly after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Contrary to what some may think, immigrants are not replacing U.S.-born workers. U.S. worker employment and participation rates have reached historically high levels, even as the immigrant labor force has increased. Immigrants, by filling gaps in the labor market, boost the economy. Congressional Budget Office Projections indicate that immigration will contribute 0.2 percentage points to annual GDP growth over the next ten years.
The demand for immigrant workers will not be uniform across states and professions. The new tool, the Brookings Institution's Visa Outlook Explorer, projects specific needs through 2030 and it is expected that professions in commerce and manufacturing will have the highest demand for new work visas due to their significant reliance on foreign workers.
States with large immigrant populations, such as California, Texas, and New York, will have the greatest need for new visas, while states such as Tennessee and Utah will see elevated demand due to job growth.
“The Visa Outlook Explorer makes clear the local and occupation-specific importance of immigration policymaking. The tool’s insights, and the research that supports it, can bolster congressional efforts to fill gaps in the labor market—for instance, by ensuring migrant farmworkers are documented, by expanding the H-2B visa cap for non-agriculture temporary workers, by reviewing and approving asylum claims at a higher rate, or perhaps by considering a new state-based visa program”.
In short, the immigrant workforce will continue to be essential to the U.S., and tools like Visa Outlook Explorer offer important forecasts to guide local labor market policies and expectations for years to come.
